$5 at a thrift shop: the wittiest example of the Paint by Number genre I have ever seen—and the most well painted one. It uses every trick in the trompe-l’oeil book, including the picture of the bird as a window.

When I was four or five my older brother opened a PBN on Christmas Eve and started to paint it. I don’t really remember the picture but it was something like this:

What I can still vividly recall was the color he opened first:

“Pale Green” and the smell of it—Oil, Wax and Earth! I was seized by a mania to paint and he wouldn’t let me touch it.